The hairs on the back of Esta’s neck rose at his words. From the look on Harte’s face, he’d shaken off whatever had happened back in the House of Books. But his expression didn’t hold the same anticipation she felt. His eyes were still glassy and distant, his jaw was tight, and there was a sheen of sweat on his temples. It was like he hadn’t even heard the oarsman.
The path was painted to look like it was paved in silver, but it was as fake as everything else on the Pike. As they walked along it with the other, completely oblivious tourists, the music changed to a softly driving melody that sounded vaguely Eastern. The path emptied into a smaller chamber that was already filled with people. In the center of the room, blocked from view, a glass case was illuminated from above.
Esta didn’t need to see the case to know that it would contain the Djinni’s Star. She could feel it calling to her, just as it had called to her in a posh Upper East Side jewelry store not long after the turn of the millennium—the last time she stole it.
If she could just slow time, perhaps she’d be able to take it here and now, but the closer she got to the case in the center of the room, the more she knew that using her affinity would be impossible. It wasn’t only that they’d walked past a pair of Jefferson Guards to enter the chamber but also that there was something sickly sweet scenting the air.
“Opium,” Harte whispered to her, his expression still distant, but more serious now as well.
“It’s just a bit of fragrance,” Julien told him, brushing aside Harte’s concerns. “They wanted to give the whole sensory experience.”
But Esta didn’t doubt that Harte was right. She’d smelled that scent before and had experienced the numbing effects of the drug as it took her ability to pull time slow when she’d been captured at the Haymarket, back when she’d first arrived in Old New York. Even now her magic felt dulled, softened by the drug. It wasn’t enough to harm anyone, but it was enough to make an affinity weaker.
Soon the three of them were standing in front of the glass case, and there, laid against midnight velvet, was the Djinni’s Star. Set into the platinum collar, the stone was polished to a brilliant shine, and within its depths, it looked as though it contained galaxies.
“I hope you can see how impossible getting your necklace back is going to be,” Julien said, leaning in close so no one else would hear. “The Streets of Cairo is the Veiled Prophet Society’s offering at the fair, and that necklace is the centerpiece. They’re never going to sell it back to you.”
They hadn’t exactly been planning to pay for it.
“Then I suppose we’ll have to take it,” Esta said with a shrug.
“Take it?” Julien’s mouth fell open. He looked to Harte, who was staring at the stone with a thoughtful expression. “From the Society? You’re completely mad.”
“No,” she whispered, giving Julien a smug smile. “I’m a thief.”
THE STREETS OF CAIRO
1904—St. Louis
Harte’s skin felt like it was on fire, even as the blood in his veins felt like ice. In front of him was the Djinni’s Star, and the power inside of him was churning, but whether it was in approval or fear, he couldn’t tell. Dimly, he realized that Esta and Julien were talking about the necklace, but he hadn’t been following their conversation . . . until Esta said that she was a thief.
“Not here,” he told her in a hushed voice. They were in a room filled with people, surrounded by Jefferson Guards. There was confidence, and then there was idiocy.
She gave him a scowl, but she closed her mouth.
“Come on,” he said, needing air. There was only so long even he could hold his breath, and he was already feeling light-headed from whatever had happened on the boat ride. Without waiting to see if they were following, he pushed through the overcrowded room and out into the street so he could finally take a breath of air that wasn’t filled with the cloying, dulling power of opium and could collect himself enough to push back the power that was rumbling excitedly inside of him.
Once he was outside, it took a moment for Harte’s eyes to adjust to the brightness. He inhaled to clear his head, but his pulse was still pounding in his temples. Instead of exiting where they had entered the attraction, they had been dumped back out onto the main thoroughfare of the Pike. The noise was deafening, and the crowd all seemed to be surging in the same direction.
Harte turned to find Esta and Julien in the crowd and was relieved to see them there, right behind him.
Julien tugged at Harte’s sleeve. “Come on,” he said, trying to lead Harte in the direction everyone else seemed to be heading. “You can’t just stand here in the middle of this mess. We’ll get trampled.”
As Julien pulled him back, a large flat-bedded wagon pulled by a team of matching gray horses passed by. A small hut made of what looked like dried palm fronds and lashed-together branches had been built at the back of the wagon’s bed. In front of the hut, an older man with darkly tanned skin who was wearing nothing more than a swath of fabric around his waist sat on a stool, looking completely uninterested in any of the people who were staring or yelling around him. Other men who were similarly dressed stood at attention, while a gaggle of children sat in the center. They might have been singing or shouting—Harte couldn’t tell because of the noise of the crowd.
“What is all of this, anyway?” Harte asked, following Julien and Esta closer to the shelter of the buildings, where the crowd wasn’t as thick.
“It’s a parade,” Julien told him.
“I can see that, but why?” Harte asked, feeling unaccountably irritated. The power inside of him was still churning, and the heat of the day was starting to creep against his skin. “Isn’t the fair itself enough?”
“It’s all part of the fun, Darrigan,” Julien told him. “How else will you know what exhibits to visit? That one that just passed, it’s for the Igorot Village—fascinating stuff. They wear hardly anything. . . . Anyway, it’ll be over soon enough. The parades never last very long, since they have at least two a day. This one’s the midday offering. There will be another later, when the lights come on.”
The three of them stood in the shade of the building for a few minutes, penned in by the crowd as the parade went by. After the wagon came a group of women dressed in silken robes, their faces painted white like geisha. Around them, the Jefferson Guard marched in straight lines, creating a boundary of protection so that the eager crowd couldn’t get too close. Whenever someone—usually a man—tried to approach, the closest of the Guards would push him back with a kind of bored violence.
“Are you okay?” Esta asked, eyeing Harte with a worried frown.
“I’m fine,” he said, shrugging off her concern.
“Because you look—”
A loud wailing split the air, and the parade erupted into chaos as three figures dressed in rumpled gowns and wearing odd, misshapen masks descended on the parade, attacking the Jefferson Guard. A sharp pop sounded, cutting through the noise and the confusion of the crowd, and colored smoke suddenly began streaming from one of the figures’ fingertips.
The Guardsmen who had been surrounding the geisha sprang into action, countering the attack.